DIXON — As he evaluated his 2013 team with assistant coaches Nick Raynor and Dennis Autry before the season, Dixon head baseball coach Jack Brown liked the Bulldogs’ prospects — really liked them.

“We thought on paper and we thought early that we really had the team that could go all the way,” Brown said. “The reason I say that is because you had three pitchers who could elevate the fastball 85-plus.”

There was staff ace, J.P. Padgett, along with fellow senior Matt Gardner with his “wicked movement and funky throwing motion,” Brown said, as well as junior Tyler Ross, whose fastball could hit the high 80s.

Throw in senior Quinn Ryan and few, if any, 1-A programs could match Dixon on the mound.

“The questions we had were could we swing the bats?” Brown said.

Actually, the question changed. The question turned out to be could the Bulldogs stay healthy, and the answer was no.

Dixon lost Ross with a broken finger one day before Gardner suffered a knee injury sliding into home to score the go-ahead run in the top of the eighth inning in a 4-2 win over Croatan to win the Touchstone Energy Classic on April 3.

At that point, Dixon was 10-3.

The injuries weren’t over for the Bulldogs, who lost third baseman Miles Padgett to an ATV accident on Mother’s Day before the second round of the playoffs.

And yet while Dixon won only four of its last 10 regular-season games and finished third in the Coastal Plains 1-A Conference, Brown and the Bulldogs were able to recover and make it to the fourth round of the playoffs, one win from a trip to the East Regional finals.

Dixon finished 17-10.

All of which was why the 51-year-old Brown has been selected as The Daily News coach of the year in a vote of area coaches and the newspaper’s sports department that saw five coaches get at least one vote.

“Well, thank you,” Brown said during an interview in his office.

It was the fourth time Brown has earned coach of the year honors since taking over the Dixon program in 2002. He also won it in 2012, 2010 and 2007.

And while this was nothing new, Brown talking with The Daily News was — at least this year. Brown had referred all questions this season to Raynor because he was banned from talking to the media. He was also reprimanded and put on probation by the NCHSAA.

The reason?

After last year’s loss to Voyager Academy in the regional finals, Brown complained charter schools like Voyager Academy don’t play by the same rules as public schools and that the NCHSAA wasn’t doing anything about it, giving such schools an unfair advantage.

Page 2 of 3 - Just exactly who imposed the media gag order, however, remains murky.

Onslow County school officials refused comment, saying it was a personnel matter. Dixon principal Vikki Childress also later declined comment, referring all questions to county officials.

“This is a personnel issue the school district cannot comment or provide answers to your questions, done, end of discussion from here, and from Ms. Childress and (Superintendent) Dr. (Kathy) Spencer,” school spokeswoman Suzie Ulbrich wrote in an email to The Daily News after an email was sent Wednesday to Childress requesting comment.

NCHSAA spokesman Rick Strunk said the reprimand and probation was “a customary penalty in these sorts of things,” adding the organization doesn’t impose gag orders on coaches and that Brown’s probation “really should be up by now since they last for a year.”

Brown, meanwhile, was in a Catch-22 situation when asked about the situation during his coach-of-the-year interview, which was monitored by a school official.

“That’s above my pay grade because I don’t know,” he said. “As far as I know I’m still on probation by the state.”

No matter, Brown was able to talk to his players and coach them up, something that led to another strong season for the Bulldogs, a season Brown said owed much to the players as well as his assistants.

“This group of kids worked as hard if not harder than any team I’ve had since I’ve been here,” Brown said “I don’t think we even took a day off at practice, maybe one day early when it rained. And these kids they put their nose to the grindstone and they worked at it and they achieved a lot of greatness with what we had.

“We got blood out of a turnip. It was a great season to know these kids worked so hard to get to where they are. That’s what makes winning important, when you work hard and you see success from your work.”

It was an unsettling season for Brown and his staff, who rarely had the luxury of penciling in the same lineup every game. Brown said there might be “three or four lineup cards with the same names in the same slots” out of 27 games.

In Dixon’s season-ending 6-3 loss at Midway, the Bulldogs started a freshman at third, shortstop and left field — and had their senior catcher, Zack Sicknick, continuing his role in the playoffs as the leadoff hitter after batting low in the order most of the year.

Brown called it an “unusual” year.

Through it all, however, Brown said he and his staff — and the players — refused to linger on the injuries or allow them to become an excuse for not winning. That, Brown said, was no more apparent than after Miles Padgett’s injury.

Page 3 of 3 - Nearly the entire team showed up at the hospital where Padgett was being treated, although Brown said no one could see him because “Miles was still in and out of it.”

“But those guys pulled together that night and that made a common bond and everybody was pulling on that rope in the same direction,” he said. “That was playoff time.”

Brown said it was an “enjoyable year,” but one that included “a lot of frustrations,” starting with the injuries, especially to Gardner because he was a senior.

“But I felt happy about it, too, because I lot of people didn’t think we could win,” Brown added. “I thought these kids really overachieved. They did a lot of things people didn’t think they could do.

“And we’re proud of them because they have nothing to be ashamed of. You look back and say, ‘Woo, we went to the fourth round and won 17 games.’ Not many people can say that.”